


the ingredients of a courtship

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Courtship, Crack, Explicit Language, F/M, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Virginity, Wooing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:30:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adjusting to the 21st century is hard enough, but there's so many new rules for Steve to learn. Especially considering he never really learned the etiquettes of dating back in the 30s. When the Avengers realize he's highly experienced... but only on the battlefield, things start happening to Steve. Is someone wooing him? And if they are, how come someone from the 21st century is maybe turning out to be just as clueless as Steve himself?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Will update as quickly as I can. Hopefully no longer than once a week.

Steve’s not entirely sure how it happened. One minute they were talking about something innocuous - where to get the best burgers in New York. Steve even found out his favorite little burger bar was still operating.

How the conversation got from burgers to how soon sex is okay when dating someone new is completely beyond him. The conversation between the Avengers just moves too fast for him to follow.

“Five dates, maximum,” Natasha says, brisk and no-nonsense. “They wait any longer than that to try and get into my knickers than they’re much too cowardly for someone like me.”

Clint looks like he’s taking notes. “How ‘bout you, Thor?”

“I was most surprised,” Thor booms, scratching his chin a little. “I had been of course avowed to wait until the decreed time. In Asgard, a warrior waits three years for their woman, to ensure he’s proved himself sufficiently in battle. Coupling is a private business between a husband and wife in my culture. So when we went... skinny bathing? I lay back on the beach to enjoy the moonlight on my naked skin, and Jane mounted herself on my manhood.”

“Uh-” Steve says, pretty sure he doesn’t want to take part in this conversation.

“And you were surprised,” Clint prompts. Steve throws him the most appalled look he can manage.

Later, Natasha will give him a pack of laxatives with the note that he looked constipated.

“She is such a small woman,” Thor rumbles, halfway between surprise and affection. “But she took all of me with nary a problem. After her, her appetite has been most demanding. I am thinking of researching her lineage. Surely there is Asgardian blood in her; her sexual appetite is incredible. Sometimes I just want to sleep. A warrior needs his beauty rest, yes?”

“Some more than others,” Clint wisecracks, shoulder-blocking Tony who winces silently, trying not to show how hard Clint’s hit him.

“Still, it would be unchurlish of me to refuse her advances, and an attack on my virility,” Thor says, contemplatively. “I am but a sole Asgardian on your planet and I must represent my people to the extent of my potential.”

None of the others looked shocked. And why would they? Tony just shrugs and says, “C’mon, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist - sometimes it’s all I can do for people to keep their underwear on around me.” Bruce mutters something about Betty kinda being the only one for him ever, which sounds somewhat adorable until he follows it up with how regularly they get it on in the labs.

The labs where Steve sits and draws quite a bit. He’ll be bringing hygienic wipes to the party from now on for sure.

“Don’t even look at me,” Steve squeaks, when they all edge a unanimous - and creepy - look in his direction. “I’m from the age of marriage before anything.”

“So you’ve never-” Natasha says, speculatively.

Steve suddenly understands what Loki must have been feeling upon regaining consciousness in Stark Tower.

“I call shotgun,” Clint says, throwing a hand in the air.

“Hey, no fair--” Natasha starts, and then edges a look at Clint speculatively. “Shotgun? What does that even mean in this scenario?”

“That I’m not taking the driving seat. No offense--” Clint holds up a hand in Steve’s direction, “but virgins are overrated.”

“I’d take offense if I had any clue what was going on,” Steve says.

“It’s probably better that you don’t,” Bruce reassures him.

“It’s just--” Steve shrugs. “I dunno. In my time you had rules. Courtship.”

“Ah, a concept I understand,” Thor says, patting Steve on the shoulder. Unfortunately, Thor’s shoulder pats are winding, and Steve spends the next minute sputtering. He ends up not being alone as Thor explains Asgardian courtship rituals.

“Really,” Bruce says, leaning forward, fascinated. “And she eats the heart raw?”

“Of course,” Thor says, looking bemused that it’s even a question.

Even Natasha looks queasy, and they’ve already had the discussion of the worst things they’ve ever eaten, and she won that contest hands down.

“Please,” Steve says, quickly and quietly, “tell me 21st century wooing is nothing like what Thor just. uh. very helpfully graphically described?”

“It’s not,” Natasha reassures him. “Dinner and dates and gifts. Just maybe a quicker wham, bam, thank you ma’am than maybe you’re used to.”

“And if you repeat the word wooing and waggle your eyebrows I’m shooting you,” Clint mutters to Tony before he can even finish opening his mouth wide enough to speak. “In the crotch.”

“Spoilsport,” Tony grumbles. He does give Steve an odd assessing look that doesn’t make any sense.

Then again, nothing makes sense much to Steve at the moment. The 21st century has a lot to adjust for, and it probably speaks volumes that Bruce Hulking out and Natasha being able to kill you seven different ways just with her hair are easy to take in, next to everything else.

~~~~~~

The next day, Steve’s mostly forgotten about the conversation, until he gets a knock on the door, and finds a carton of cooked takeaway noodles, still piping hot, and a small wrapped up parcel on the floor just outside his door-- and no one in sight.

Steve pulls it back into his apartment, and looks through for a note, finally finding one tucked into the neatly wrapped parcel.

“Some old fashioned wooing,” reads the note. “PS: Open the gift!”

Frowning, Steve opens the present to find a packet of dried dates.

Steve stares at it all for a while.

Either someone’s playing a joke on him, the 21st century concept of wooing is really this bizarre, or... someone’s interpreted wooing completely wrong.

Whatever the answer... Steve’s going to find out what it is.

~~~~~~

...maybe after he’s eaten the noodles. Super serum soldiers take a lot of feeding, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

 “You know,” Natasha tells him, bending her knees and beckoning at him to hit her, “you probably shouldn’t have eaten it.”

“Oh,” Steve says. It hadn’t even crossed his mind. “I figured if someone was going to kill me, they wouldn’t really do it with noodles.”

Natasha gets bored of beckoning and kicks Steve in the side of his head.

He does try and stop her, but he still hasn’t gotten the hang of blocking her fighting style yet.

At least he knows how to fall.

People rarely realize falling well is one of the key facets of fighting success.

One of the other key things to learn is probably not to spar with the Black Widow.

“It was probably a joke,” Steve says, jumping back to his feet in one smooth motion. He tries to hit her, but his hand sails through the air several times. She kicks him into the wall, and smiles at him. Her canine teeth are slightly longer than her other teeth, making her smile look a little wolfish.

“Probably,” Natasha says. “But next time, let SHIELD scan the food, yeah?”

“I highly doubt there’ll be a next time,” Steve says. Natasha gives him an eyeroll that he wants to respond to, but he’s too busy being slammed facedown into the mat.

~~~~~~

“So someone gave you food, and you’ve no idea who, and you just ate it?” Tony asks.

“People have been saying that a lot recently,” Steve says, and looks up. Tony’s currently immersed in three different screens at once, and doesn’t even look up, but it doesn’t mean he can’t hold a conversation with Steve too — Tony takes the idea of multi-tasking to the extremes. “I took the dates to SHIELD and they scanned them, but they were just dates.”

Tony nods. “So… not that I’m not enjoying your company, because I am, but… how come you’re not hiding out in the labs?”

“I don’t hide,” Steve says, “I hang out. See. 21st century lingo. I’m down with the kids, yo.”

Tony does look up at that. “Promise me you’ll never say that again.”

“What,” Steve says, innocently. “That I’m down with the kids, yo?”

“Gargh,” Tony says, returning to his work. “It’s like conversing with an old person.”

“I have at least three set of Avengers minutes where it’s down in black and white that you called me old man,” Steve says. “And there was that charming time you asked me to decipher hieroglyphics because they were from my time period. Call it karma.”

“I don’t trust karma,” Tony says. “I don’t trust anything I can’t buy.”

“What about things that are bought _for_ you.”

Tony grins at him. “I trust those the least. And I certainly don’t _eat_ them.”

“I was _hungry,_ ” Steve says.

“And you’ve avoided the topic,” Tony says, bringing up a fourth screen and not even taking a moment to look confused as he switches intermittently between the four. “Why are you avoiding the labs? I thought you liked how it was the only place you could be quiet? Has Bruce started humming _the girl from ipanema_ again? I can get him to stop - I like hacking humans, it’s therapeutic—”

“No, no, Bruce hasn’t— it’s fine. It’s okay. Just nothing.”

“Nothing,” Tony echoes, narrowing his eyes. “This isn’t about what he said about Betty and him, because I’ve been in that lab too, and—”

“I just felt like gathering some different opinions on noodlegate,” Steve interrupts, before Tony can continue into a conversation topic Steve wasn’t entirely happy about being involved in the first time around.

“ _Noodlegate,_ ” Tony repeats.

Steve shrugs. “Clint’s name for it.”

Tony squints. “And what was Clint’s opinion?”

“I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.”

“Ah,” Tony says. “You shouldn’t have eaten the noodles.”

Steve nods, heavily.

~~~~~~

“You did the right thing in consuming the noodle food, my friend,” Thor says, and lurches for a back pat.

Steve knows better, and he casually dodges out of the way. “Apparently it’s protocol not to. We’re well known in the world now, Thor. When supervillains learn they can’t use their weapons against us, they may start to find more fiendish ways to kill us.”

“Hmm,” Thor says, thinking about it. “Like my brother’s tricksome ways. I shall make a mental note of it. I am glad you are well and that your noodles were from an admirer.”

“An admirer,” Steve repeats.

“Of course,” Thor says, shaking his head. “Did the others not say dinner and dates were your culture’s version of wooing? If you still have the dates your wooer has left you, I would be pleased to note the brand so I can purchase a similar package for my Jane. I am sure she would be thrilled at me trying to assimilate her culture’s practices.”

“Uh,” Steve says, “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been a hit with the dames.”

“Of course not,” Thor says, frowning. “One should never hit a woman unless you have permission. And even then—” Thor pauses, looking pained.

“—you don’t have to finish that sentence,” Steve says, heavily. “I’ve tried to spar with Natasha too.”

~~~~~~

The labs are the quietest place Steve has found. Mostly because the SHIELD agents usually dispatched to bring him in for either more tests to ascertain the super soldier serum from Steve’s blood are scared of the Hulk, and thus leave Steve alone. Also, because the place usually smells of formaldehyde.

Steve doesn’t have an issue with the smell. He does have an issue with the things that were revealed in their chat the other day, but Bruce is like Tony in that his work absorbs him completely (another reason why Steve likes the labs to draw in, or read in, because it’s so quiet) so Steve’s able to surreptitiously use antibacterial spray on his favorite couch without Bruce noticing.

Steve likes Bruce, a lot, but not enough to sit in anything he might have… left behind from his lab misadventures with Betty. Steve might be inexperienced when it comes to sex, but he’s heard it’s messy.

Steve tries to work on his current sketch, a pencil study of some of the equipment in the lab Tony fitted up for Bruce. It’s filled with lots of Hulk-friendly feature and re-inforced walls. He can’t keep his mind on the sketch.

Bruce turns around half-way through Steve spraying the nearest table.

“Uh,” Bruce says, “what are you doing?”

Steve mentally crosses his fingers and hopes for the best. “1930s stuff. You probably don’t do it now, but we used to have to clean everything back then.”

Bruce stares at Steve. Steve’s never considered using it as an excuse, but he’s constantly surprised by 21st century practices, so it might work.

Uh, maybe Steve should have tested it on someone less clever. He tries to come up with another lie, but can’t think of one. Dammit. It took him a couple of hours to come up with this one. It’s hard being a paragon of truth and justice.

“’Kay,” Bruce finally says, after a long pause. “Just don’t spray my experiments.”

“Got it,” Steve says, leaning against the stool nearest to the table in relief.

The stool which he hasn’t sprayed yet.

Which Bruce and Betty might have—

Uh—

Steve quickly sprays it, thinks about it, sprays himself, and then makes some casual excuse to leave.

“By the way,” Bruce says when Steve’s nearly to the door, “someone said you ate something you shouldn’t? You feeling okay?”

Steve shrugs. “I was fine.”

Bruce eyeballs the antibacterial spray still in Steve’s hand. “Sure you are,” he says, but turns back to his work. Steve puts the antibacterial spray back on the table he found out, pats the doorframe in celebration of his successful lie and escape, and is two floors down from the labs before his brain points out Bruce and Betty might have had sex against the doorframe.

Steve severely regrets leaving the antibacterial spray behind.

He looks down at his hand sadly, and drops into the nearest bathroom to wash his hand a thousand times.

~~~~~~

When he gets back to his room, Steve’s hand in sore but at least he’s sure it’s clean. He shuts the door, turns on the light, and jumps - on the bed is a plain box. A lot like the box the noodles and dates had been in.

Feeling odd about it, having spent the date getting conflict advice over how he handled the last box, Steve sidles over and picks up his shield from the table before edging over to the box and tentatively flicking the box open.

Inside is a note saying “wooing is difficult!” and a shrink-wrapped package of anti-bacterial spray.

Steve frowns, and takes the box to the nearest SHIELD office.

~~~~~~

He meets Clint in the foyer.

~~~~~~

Steve is not impressed that Clint asks him if he ate any of the anti-bacterial spray.

~~~~~~

Clint would probably stop laughing if Steve hadn’t said, “ _I learned my lesson last time._ ”

~~~~~~

Steve would probably stop feeling like an idiot if he had remembered to say that you don’t eat antibacterial spray in time.


End file.
